Into the Breach

A riveting memoir about war and peace from Canada’s former top soldier, General Wayne Eyre, on his career as a soldier and his thoughts on our Arctic sovereignty, our relationship with the United States, and our place in the world during Canada’s greatest time of need.

When a soldier steps forward to take on a difficult task, they say they are going "into the breach," and few Canadian senior military leaders have jumped into the breach more often and with such conviction as our most recent Chief of the Defence Staff. General Wayne Eyre led the Canadian Armed Forces through multiple, overlapping crises and its most challenging period in generations. He was the most senior Canadian military officer ever permanently stationed in the Indo-Pacific region when he became the first non-American Deputy Commander in Korea of United Nations Command. He commanded the reconnaissance platoon in the Battle of the Medak Pocket, Canadas largest battle between the Korean and Afghanistan Wars. And he commanded the unit mentoring the Afghan National Army in Kandahar, up to that time Canadas largest ever combat advisory mission.

Not since Roméo Dallaire’s Shake Hands with the Devil and General Rick Hillier’s A Soldier First has a top Canadian general told his story, as Canadian generals do not have a tradition of capturing the history of their service. In Into the Breach, he recounts jumping right into the fire: leading peacekeeping missions in Cyprus, Croatia, and Bosnia, the Afghanistan evacuation, supporting Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression, confronting Chinese intimidation in the Pacific and spy balloons over North America, and leading Canada’s contribution to the international effort to defend South Korea in a time of rapidly changing geopolitical dynamics. At home, he describes battling floods and forest fires across Canada, supporting the country during the worst of COVID, and, behind the scenes, fighting in the halls of power to get the resources needed to defend our nation as the threat levels increased every day, especially to our arctic sovereignty.

Into the Breach illuminates and is a tribute to the rich history of our military and its members in a changing age dominated by increasing threats, global disorder, and unrelenting operational demands for the Canadian Armed Forces.